Why I quit my job as a Product Manager at Google after 4 months

Big tech is a bad training ground for learning how to do a startup

5 years ago, I wrote what became one of the most extensive guides on the internet for landing a Product Manager role at Google. The post went viral and remains one of the top resources candidates use for interview prep. I still get 100s of LinkedIn messages from people sharing either their success or rejection stories.

If you got the job, I'm genuinely happy for you.

But if you didn't, this post is for you. Working at Google isn't the end-all-be-all, and my experience there was a strange mix of validation, disillusionment, and awakening. Looking back, I would skip it entirely.

Why I Applied to Google's APM Program in the First Place

My north star has always been entrepreneurship. When I first discovered Google's Associate Product Management (APM) program, the pitch I was sold was that you'd be the "CEO" of your product, getting the best possible training ground for doing a startup.

5 years later and I couldn't disagree further.

Organizations like Google are massive, well-funded machines with strictly defined bureaucracies. You have an effectively unlimited budget, layers of approval processes, and everything moves SLOW (this is why OpenAI took their lunch money with ChatGPT).

This is the antithesis of what you experience at a high-growth startup. I'd go as far as to say that spending too many years at Google actually makes you worse at building your own company.

My Reality: Horrifying, Validating, and Eye-Opening

I won't pretend the Google logo on a resume doesn’t open doors, or that this can be extremely validating. It's an incredible signal in a world where screening for intelligence and work ethic is increasingly hard. But in the age of AI, where anyone can build and distribute products from their bedroom, institutional validation continues to be a declining trend. I also wrote about this in my piece on why I’m turning down Stanford Business School.

In 2025, you can just build something people want and allow your traction to validate you.

Racism on Google’s campus

I faced some pretty awful racism on Google's campus that unfortunately went viral across Twitter, Forbes, and tons of major publications. While this wasn't Google's fault, it created an unbearable environment for me. I even caught a few coworkers taking secret pictures of me at the office like I did something wrong.

This forced me into a deep reflection about what I was actually getting from the experience, and whether it was worth it. In that exploration, I had many conversations with my manager, current employees, and alumni, and found one overwhelming takeaway: Working at Google does not prepare you to do a startup.

The Skills Gap

Your first few years at Google are spent mastering Google-specific tools that become worthless the moment you walk out the door. You're trained to ship products with precision over speed, to build consensus rather than make fast decisions, and to avoid breaking things at all costs.

You'll burn enormous amounts of energy navigating internal politics for your next promotion. And the salary? You won't make anything close to it as a founder.

These are the exact habits you must unlearn if you want to build something new. The best startup founders are scrappy. They create value from nothing. They launch early, iterate fast, and run through walls on a daily basis to achieve hyper growth.

What I'd Do Differently

If I could rewind five years, I'd skip Google entirely and go straight into building.

I strongly encourage any aspiring entrepreneur to join an early-stage startup instead of big tech. You'll get 3x the ownership, 5x the responsibility, and 10x the learning. You'll understand what it actually takes to create something from scratch when resources are scarce and every decision matters.

The window to build generational companies has never been wider, but it's also never moved faster. Nothing prepares you for the arena other than jumping in.

As always, these are my opinions, and I’m happy to hear anyone who disagrees.